


eternal recurrence

by thekitchensnk



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: (but thankfully Aleksander does), F/M, Gunshot Wounds, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Pining, Self-Esteem Issues, Teenaged Regina is so powerful and doesn't even realise it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekitchensnk/pseuds/thekitchensnk
Summary: “Are we not friends?” He asks quietly, as if suddenly realising that he has misunderstood her.She gives him a numb look, a thin, gray thing. “You barely know me,” she murmurs.Regina wants friendship so badly that she has barely has the words – but that has always been her problem; the wanting.Her hand is still on his bare arm. She lets it drop.------(Bullet wounds need more than bandages, or: Regina Tiedemann takes Boris Niewald home)
Relationships: Aleksander Tiedemann | Boris Niewald/Regina Tiedemann
Comments: 21
Kudos: 100





	eternal recurrence

“If I had to do it all again – if I had to suffer every moment that hurt so much, every minute of pain I felt on the path that led me here - I’d still choose this,” she says quietly. “I’d still choose you. And I’d do it again and again until the end of time itself, Aleks. Nothing else matters.”

\---

Her mother wears makeup like the gladiators of old wore armour. A violent flash of blue on the eyes is her short-sword; the red of her hair a helmet; the orange of her lips a breastplate -

But that isn’t quite right, is it?

The warriors of old bore arms to protect themselves, to deflect yellowing lions’ teeth and bright slashes of steel. What need could her mother have of protection? The thought is laughable.

Does her mother have human skin that a lion’s tooth could pierce? Could the slash of a sword draw forth her blood?

(Does a human heart - something warm and malleable and capable of beating for someone else - even sit in her chest?)

Regina is not sure that she could say for certain anymore. What she _does_ know, and knows for sure, is that her mother is invincible. Invincible - and _cold._ Regina knows that best of all.

Why then the makeup?

As she stands before the mirror, the silk of her mother’s robe soft on her skin - as soft as the loving touch she has imagined so often and so fervently, but which has never actually known - Regina paints her lips.

The makeup is the expression of something. It is not the cause. Gladiators wore armour because they feared harm, because they cowered from death. Her mother’s makeup is like a punch to the face, like the stab of a knife. It roars to the world that Claudia Tiedemann exists and her existence _will_ be noted. The makeup says, _I fear nothing._

Makeup is not armour. Armour is worn out of fear.

Her mother wears the makeup because she is fearless. Her face is painted in triumph.

The vivid lipstick is wet and slides on Regina’s lips. She has applied it unevenly and her lips are not quite equal. Her glasses lie abandoned on the counter, an attempt to buttress the fragile fantasy of the moment. The raised scars on her wrists are a network of red and bumpy lines, but a network that connect her to nothing and to no one.

_There_ , she begs her reflection softly. _Make me fearless too. Make me fearless. Make me enough to be loved._

She asks: _is it enough?_

_Could it ever be enough?_

_Could I -_

\---

Regina is awkward and can’t hold a conversation. Regina’s hair is mousy and listless. Regina’s eyes peer out frightfully behind too-large glasses that sit on her face like jam jar lids. Regina’s clothes are dull and baggy and ill-fitting. Regina has no sense of humour. Regina doesn’t know how to smile. Regina is a gray and stretched-out thing and utterly, utterly charmless.

Regina is defective.

Claudia so often throws her hands up in the air in anger, understanding nothing, and says: “Do you do this to spite me? If you would only put in some _effort_ , Regina…”

(But why should she humiliate herself by trying to make herself beautiful when she knows her body is incapable of beauty? Why should she humiliate herself when there are so many people out there willing to do it for her?)

Regina’s arms cower in front of her body almost instinctively when she’s out of the house because she has been pushed over in the street often enough that fear has just became normal, somewhere along the line. She takes strange twisting paths home now, circling through the forest and through the trees, scurrying like a mouse, and she does not know who she is hiding from – her tormenters or her mother. It is has become increasingly hard to tell the difference, these days.

Amongst her many mistakes, Regina had made the criminal mistake of earnestness once, of actually _liking_ the books that she has to read in class, of having dared once upon a time to make an effort, to take the risk of being seen. She knows better now, and wished she had known better then. It would have saved her a lot of trouble in the long run.

She has learnt her lesson: it does not do to be seen.

Had she never been seen by Katharina Albehrs and Ulrich Nielsen, she might never have found herself pushed over in the school halls, her school books tipped from her bag and into the garbage.

She might never have found herself tied to a tree in the forest, weeping into the night, crying out for help that never came – realising, for the first time, that she was so _contemptible_ and unworthy of love that even if someone _had_ heard her screams, they _still_ wouldn’t have helped her anyway, because she is _not enough._

She might not have to spend every waking moment watching over her shoulder and knowing that for her, help is never going to come.

She cannot help but think of her mother’s orange red lipstick and all that it entails.

_Make me fearless. Make me enough._

If only she was loveable – If only she was not _like this_ – then someone, someone somewhere might care enough to help her, to want her. When Katharina and Ulrich had tied her to the tree that night, her mama had not even noticed that she was gone.

And her mother is a genius.

_Regina_ , she named her daughter, and like all things Claudia does, it is struck through with pride. Her mother could work the Classics faultlessly by the age of 15, had translated Cicero and Tacitus for school with a bored eye and sneering lip, slipping physics textbooks inside the Greats to read in class.

_Regina; reginam; reginae. Regina._ _Queen_ , in the Latin; a ruler. Had her mother looked at her as a baby, mapping out her destiny? A destiny for someone strong and brave and popular and beautiful - a destiny for a Regina who wouldn’t wear the name like some kind of cosmic joke?

_Another disappointment for mama’s endless list,_ Regina thinks, lip trembling.

Her mother can recite the periodic table backwards by atomic mass, can make peace with the theories of Einstein and Schrodinger in her mind, can list from the bottom up the constituent parts of stars and galaxies.

Claudia can split apart atoms and wrench apart molecules and can carry a town on her shoulders and she can do it on her own, and better still - everyone knows it.

Her mother - it seems - can always do the things that matter.

But she can’t love Regina the way she needs to be loved. She can’t see her in a way that doesn’t hurt.

_But that’s not really her fault. Like I thought,_ Regina thinks numbly. _She does what **matters.**_

\---

But she isn’t fearless – not now, not ever.

How can she say how it feels, to sit on her own in the heavy silence with the walls of the fading dusk-light boxing her in? How can she describe how it feels to feel this wretched, this pained, this _lonely_? How it feels to cry out again and again and have no one come?

She wants to tear out her dish-rag hair, to bite her uneven lips to shreds, to claw at her simpering cheeks and act out her vengeance on her loathsome, inadequate body. She wants to rip out the soul inside which she has come to realise will never be loved, _could_ never be loved.

These are the things thar Regina wishes for, but a razor can only cut so deep.

How desperate, how pitiful, to want the things she knows she cannot have. How pathetic to want so violently; how disgusting, to be conscious of it all the same.

The scars on her wrists are a web of red and bumpy lines, connections and bridges spanning her skin that connect to nothing, to no one. Her suffering, brought up from within, translated on her skin. Her suffering, now in the world; made real.

Breathing deeply in anticipation of the strange euphoria that the razor-edge brings, she presses down and her skin –

-gives way.

\---

And then –

Ulrich and Katerina are upon her like the wolves they are.

Katerina’s eye is smudged in blacks and purples, fierce and enflamed. Even Ulrich looks alarmed when Katarina snarls out:

“See this? My mom did this. And why? Because you fed your grandpa _bullshit_.”

Regina’s hands begin to wring her wrists, her body closing in on itself timidly.

“I didn’t-“ she says, eyes wide with fear. “Honest-“

“Rape! Is that the best you could come up with?” Katharina pushes Ulrich’s arm away ferociously when he moves to calm her.

And suddenly it is all Regina can do to crane back her head to look Katharina in the eyes, those eyes which are fixed and intent with loathing. Katharina’s knee careens forward violently and into her stomach. A sick, bruise-coloured flash of pain and Regina is sent to the floor, the air sucked from her lungs with a low groan.

The pain rushes through her and her mouth is suddenly thick with the hot slimy saliva that heralds being sick. Hunched over, she grasps at her stomach. Pathetically, childishly, her hand still clutches at her headphones.

Katharina fingers dig into her arm like daggers, heaving her to her wobbling legs, and that is when she hears it - a voice like something almost out of a dream, calling from out of the woods.

“Hey, stop!”

Her face is tight with fear. Her breath is coming quickly, like an oncoming panic attack, because her body has learnt the lessons of pain and humiliation dealt out at the hands of bullies and feels like it knows what is coming next.

But no one could know what would happen next.

Katharina stares at the stranger hostilely. “Piss off! It’s none of your business,” she spits out.

“I told you,” the new-comer – an older boy - says calmly, “to stop.”

The command in his voice makes Katharina bristle. Regina knows that she has never once liked being told what to do, not for an instant. She drops hold of Regina, squares her shoulders and raises her chin, a challenge in her eyes.

“And I told _you_ ,” she says dangerously, “to piss off.”

The words that follow, the eerie decency and gallantry of it all, throw everyone off balance.

“Apologise to her,” the boy commands.

His words, this mismatched chivalry, are so absurd that for a moment Regina forgets to feel fear. It is almost laughable. She hunches in on herself further, feeling wretched, and looks between Katharina and this stranger who has – who has –

_Later_ , Regina thinks anxiously. _Think about it later._

Katharina’s lip curls only slightly – but it is derisive enough that everyone can see it.

This seems to do it for the older boy. He has had enough. His eyes harden. “I said you should apologise,” he repeats coldly, only this time he reaches into his waistband and pulls out -

_A gun,_ Regina thinks with a visceral stab of panic and her vision begins to swim slightly with it. She can feel herself begin to hyperventilate. She thought she had felt sick before, but now she knows true nausea. _Oh god. Oh god._

They are brutes and bullies, but they don’t deserve to _die_.

_Is this really happening?_

Ulrich takes a worried half step back. Katharina may be a bully, but she has nerves of steel – Regina has to give her that much credit. She and Ulrich are sick with panic – she can feel it in the atmosphere, in the air - but Katharina matches the stranger’s coolness.

“And how do I know that it’s real?”

The boy stares hard, never breaking eye contact, and calmly take out the clip with a click. In a measured gesture, he shows her; fully-loaded.

It is only then that Katharina shows fear – the arrogance bleeds away all of a sudden, and Regina sees her bite at her lip.

Regina has never seen such a beautiful thing in her life.

Her rescuer’s voice is certain, pitched in a steady and furious hush. “You two get the hell out of here, and fast. And if you hurt her again - I’ll finish you.” When he speaks, it rings as true as prophecy. He does not blink, this boy - not once. His hands are rock steady. He is dangerous, threat lingering in every sharp line of his body.

Ulrich, so cocky and prideful when he’s bullying a girl whom no one will defend, is the first to turn tail and run, looking over his shoulder in fear as he darts away. Katharina follows only a second behind him.

The boy still does not blink, or turn aside his scrutiny, but at last – _finally -_ he lowers the gun.

It is only once her tormentors are out of sight that he turns to her, and only then that she can take in what she has been seeing.

The boy is not tall, but he is taller than her, and slim with it, as if missed meals are more the norm than not. A battered black leather jacket with a collar hangs off his shoulders and dark, lank hair falls about his eyes. His face is a gaunt one and his cheekbones are high.

And his eyes – his eyes are like ice, the colour of something hard and frozen.

But she is not afraid. Not anymore.

He stows the gun clumsily back in his waistband, and that clumsiness gives her hope, the notion that it might not be as comfortable in his hands as he had made it out to be.

Her heart is beating wildly. He walks closer, cautiously, and he does the _strangest_ thing. He places a reassuring touch on her arm.

The touch is warm. The touch is heavy. The touch is so _easy_ for something that feels like a miracle.

Touch-starved, her heart batters against her chest.

What he says will mark her indelibly for the rest of her life, but she doesn’t know that yet.

His eyes are like ice, but the look he gives her is anything but cold. The tightness in his face eases.

It is so soft.

“Everything is okay,” he says gently. His hand - lingers.

She looks up at him with her wide eyes, dazed, and she breathes quickly, in and out.

Her voice comes out strangled, but soft and grateful. Heartfelt, even. “Thank you.”

And suddenly, he is more dazed than she is and he nods, and he nods, and he keeps on nodding as he collapses.

She cannot help but fall with him, to her knees.

His hands shake, he touches his chest. She doesn’t know how she didn’t notice it before, but his hair is slicked to his forehead, it is separated into strands. He is bathed in cold sweat that shines even in the gray light.

And on his fingers, almost garish, almost vulgar – blood.

His breath comes quickly then too.

“You’re bleeding!” She says, alarmed. She leans over, and her hands drift towards his own. She pulls back abruptly and he tries to rise.

“It’s not so bad,” he says weakly, trying so hard to sound convincing.

She shakes her head with certainty. “You have to see a doctor,” she urges.

It is his turn for his eyes to widen in fear. He does not stop looking, this strange boy. He swallows, and he shakes his head beseechingly.

Something clicks in her mind then. She looks at him, and she makes a decision.

“We have bandages at home. My mother isn’t in.” Pity and compassion bloom in her eyes. Something in her is resolute and strong. “I can do it.”

Their breath is misting in the cold air.

He nods again, gratefully this time.

“What is your name?” she asks.

He breathes for a moment and pauses, as if putting himself back together.

“Aleksander,” he says. The name sounds almost strange in his mouth, but Regina knows better than anyone the discomfort of an ill-fitting name.

His lips try to twitch upwards once, twice, several times, but whatever there is of a smile is strangled before it can come to life.

_Aleksander_ , Regina thinks. _Aleksander._

\---

How they make it all the way home, she’ll never know. He grows paler every moment that they walk, until he looks pale as a sheet. His skin is red hot to the touch – she knows because he has to give up trying to walk without her assistance, and they have to travel the final kilometer with his cheek pressed flush against her own. He might be slender, but he is heavy, and her legs ache bearing his weight.

What do you _say_ to a person who has been shot?

“You’re going to be alright,” she says in a voice cracked with fear. “We’re so, so close. The house at the end – the bungalow, do you see it? That’s us. That’s me. We’re almost there, and you’re going to be okay. We’re really close, I promise.” She pauses for a breath. “Oh god, oh god. I should call an ambulance – you’re bleeding out. You’re hurt. You’re really badly hurt.”

His lank hair is in her eyes. It is almost in her mouth, but still they press on.

“No,” he begs. “No hospital. Please.” He takes a shuddering breath. “ _Please_.”

_No hospital. Okay,_ she thinks desperately. _You’ve been shot, I think. You have a gun. I’m not a nurse, Aleksander. I can only do so much._

Regina may not be able to translate Tacitus or recite the progression of decay of Uranium-235 like her mother can, but she is _not_ _stupid_.

_An East German_ , her mind races. _You must be. A fugitive from behind the Iron Curtain._ Her heart lurches with compassion suddenly. _The things you must have seen._

She is out of breath – bearing his weight is so _hard_ \- but she thinks he feels her shaky nod. _No hospitals._

When they reach her house, he has to lean against the wall to keep himself upright as she fumbles with her key. It is all he has to stop himself from sliding to the floor.

It has all been so much in such a short space of time. He had –

_No time for that now_ , she bats the thought away with sudden ferocity. _He needs you._

They make it in, somehow.

For the first time in a long time, her mind is utterly clear.

_Bathroom – blood cleans easier off tiles than carpet. If he sits in the tub, the blood will go down the drain. The wound needs to be cleaned. Water?_ She shakes her head in agitation. _No, no – a disinfectant. Alcohol. Whiskey? Mama has whiskey, right? But actually, water too, to clean the skin around it. Do I need to boil it? Yes. Maybe? Surely? Oh god. Oh god. What about the bandages – they need to be clean too, right? What am I **doing**? I might **kill** him._

Her hands are shaking.

She loops his arm around her shoulder and he gives her another of his bleary, grateful looks. She hates suddenly how trusting he is, knowing that with one false move, she could kill him. Why does he have to have such faith in her?

“This way,” she says, her voice trembling. “We’re going to the bathroom. I want you to sit in the bath tub and take off your sweater. I’m going to boil water. We’re going to clean your wounds first, and then we’ll apply the bandages.”

It is a very short walk, but hard to manoeuvre when walking two abreast. Eventually, they find themselves in the bathroom.

She turns on the light. The fluorescence does him no favours. He looks ghostly in the electric light, barely able to stand.

“I-“ he says. And then he stops abruptly. He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I can’t take these off by myself. I can’t move my shoulder.”

Regina’s eyes are a little bit wild.

“I’m sorry,” Aleksander says again weightily. “I’m-“

“It’s alright,” she says in a rush, summoning up all her courage. “Of course it’s alright. I’ll help you. Let me help you.”

She closes the distance between them gingerly. There are scant inches between them. She sees the bump of his Adam’s apple move almost imperceptibly as he swallows, feels the fever heat from his skin. His gaze is on her, thankful and trusting, and why does that scare her? To be looked at with faith like that?

He is entirely in her space; she let him there. His blue eyes are dark and soft looking at her. She carefully removes his black jacket, her fingers brushing over his clothes.

She cannot help but think it: does he feel the weight of them like she did, when his hand laid on her arm? Does her touch move him the way his moved her?

The jumper is soaked through with his blood, clogged and slick with it, a dark pool spreading over his chest. The sight is immediately appalling; her reaction visceral.

“ _Oh_ ,” she says numbly. “Oh god.”

His eyes flash to hers in bleary concern. “It’s going to be alright,” he says again, faintly this time, faint in a way that makes _her_ feel faint. And then, absurdly, in that strange, concerned way of his that she is already beginning to know, he says in a daze: “You’re going to get blood on your sweater.”

“Too late,” she half-laughs wetly, the sound gurgling.

His eyes are heavy-lidded with the pain and the blood loss. She makes fists of her hands in the bottom of his sweater, and carefully – so carefully – eases it up his torso.

He is finely muscled, but too slender – this is all she has time to think before she averts her eyes in shame, breathing through her nose. When it gets to his shoulders, the sweater catches, and he grunts with the pain low in his throat.

Her eyes widen and snap to his immediately. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, though why she whispers it, she doesn’t know.

His face is so close to hers. She can see each individuated eyelash, the line of his nose. His expression is open and earnest as he looks back at her, though his voice is strained. “No,” he says. “ _No_. You’re helping me. Don’t apologise.”

He shifts, and working together, they slowly manage to wrangle it over his head. He is bare now, and bloody beneath the hands which tentatively hold him, which shyly touch him. Her hands are red; they are sticky with his blood.

“Into the tub now,” she coaxes, her hand gentle against the naked skin of his back, supporting his weight. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

\---

He gulps down a generous amount of the vodka Regina had been surprised to find at the back of her mother’s liquor cabinet. She has never known her mother to be a vodka drinker, but then again, there is much that she doesn’t know about her mother, and much that her mother does not know about Regina. As he drinks it down, wiping at the side of his mouth with the back of his hand, she is impressed that he does not seem to recoil at the burn of it going down, and feel the instinct to cough it all back up again.

When he grips at the sides of the bath, ready for this sordid process to begin, he grips so hard that his knuckles go white.

“Wait-“ he, Aleksander, says suddenly.

Regina, kneeling on the bathroom floor with the bottle of vodka and her sterilised water, pauses.

“Are you feeling alright?” she asks tentatively, and then cringes harshly when realises what a _stupid_ thing to say it is to a boy shot through with a bullet

He looks at her from under heavy lids, his voice calm but his eyes uncertain. “While you do this – Could we - talk? Please? I know that you’ve already done so much–“

_Frightened,_ she realises. _He knows that it’s going to hurt. He doesn’t want to do it without a distraction. Of course he doesn’t._

It is such a simple thing to do for him. How could she ever begrudge it? “Of course,” she says simply. “If that’s what you want.”

He gives her a clammy, pained look of gratitude.

Regina soaks her cloth in the water and wrings it out again, the water sloshing back into the bowl.

“I still don’t even know your name,” Aleksander admits quietly.

Immediately, she cringes violently and a wave of self-loathing washes over her.

_Graceless, charmless, **stupid**_. _You didn’t even tell him your name. Could you **be** more socially inept? It’s no wonder you have no friends. You can’t even manage the bare minimum. _

Regina is silent for a beat and uses the moment to begin to wipe away the blood on his torso. The bullet has gone all the way through him. It is a miracle that it isn’t still lodged in him. It could have cost him the nerves in his shoulder otherwise.

“Regina,” she mumbles eventually, taking advantage of the task at hand to avoid looking him in the eye. “Regina Tiedemann.”

She is anxious of him seeing too much. She has rolled her sleeves all the way up to her elbows, for fear that the fibres of her jumper might stray and infect his wounds, and her wrists are exposed. She moves in a jerky, mechanistic way, keen to hold the inside of her arm such that he cannot see her wrists. He is a stranger - she knows that rationally - but all the same, she also knows that for some reason it would bring her great shame for him to see the lines carved out there.

She soaks the cloth again gently, and his pink, diluted blood streams down her wrists like a ghostly after image; his blood, lines and bridges, a network of rivulets, and her own – suddenly, inexplicably connected.

Regina brings her cloth to his chest again, and he inhales a shuddering breath. The side of her hand skirts his skin, and it is so hot to the touch.

Would that heat warm her, were they pressed skin to skin?

_Do you just run warmer than me?_ Regina thinks. _Or are you sick?_

“I’m sorry,” he offers quietly. “They didn’t apologise in the end. The two from earlier. I couldn’t get them to.”

_But you tried_ , she thinks. _You **tried**._

What he’s saying is absurd, and so she looks at him in confusion. “They never do. But it doesn’t matter-“ she says in a small, shaking voice. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

The look that he gives her is serious. “It does matter,” he insists. “ _You_ matter.” He shakes his head and his voice grows heated. “That was - It wasn’t – It wasn’t _decent_. It wasn’t respectful. It wasn’t right. I saw from the trees - you did nothing to provoke them. You did nothing wrong and she just _attacked_ you.”

His eyes are bright with agitation and the sight of it sets something to squirming in Regina’s stomach. She says nothing, wrings her cloth out again, and continues about her task.

“That wasn’t right,” Aleksander repeats slowly. “You don’t deserve to be treated like that. No one does.” He looks into her eyes searchingly.

Her heart pounds in her chest.

_Deserve,_ Regina thinks desolately. _A word which could fit the world. Who knows what I deserve?_

She avoids his earnest eyes, which still burn with a muted anger at the injustice done to her. Her heart drops and her lower lip begins to tremble. It is entirely too much.

His chest is mostly clean of blood now, and the water in the bowl is scarlet.

She deflects from the topic. With studied casualness, she asks: “Have you been staying in Winden? I haven’t seen you around before.” 

He stills, and once again, the knuckles of his hands, grasping the sides of the bath tub, go white. Regina cannot help but notice.

“No,” he admits quietly. “I’m not from around here.”

_If I ask_ , Regina knows immediately, _he won’t tell me a thing. He has built up his walls too high, like me. He doesn’t trust me._

It is an odd little thought – that he has put his life in her hands, but that he wouldn’t for a moment trust her with his secrets.

Strangely, she doesn’t take offense at that. Regina can empathise – there are some things, certain things, that belong in the dark and complex crevices of your soul, things not fit to be illuminated and seen by anyone else.

If anyone knows the compulsion towards secrecy, it is Regina. She’s not sure she’d trust anyone with her secrets either.

“Oh,” she says blandly, and she sees in Aleksander’s face that he understands that the sound covers a multitude of sins. Slowly, in the course of a moment, he grows relieved and the tension in his body drops. “Then that was the wrong question. Will you stay in Winden?”

She reaches for a clean cloth, and this time, she soaks it through with vodka. The air is suddenly thick with the smell of it.

He closes his eyes gently, and when he opens them again, the look in his eyes is one of uncertainty. He tries for one of those almost-smiles, the ones where his lips twitch but his face falls - but he cannot even get that far. He exhales in exhaustion. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he admits to her in a small, tired voice. “So I guess so.”

Regina’s heart leaps suddenly, and it is just as much of a surprise to her that it happens. She grits her teeth, and she pushes it to the side violently, refusing to examine it.

_Pathetic_ , she snarls at herself in a voice that sounds like her mother’s. _Pathetic._

“We need to clean the wound itself now,” she says carefully, holding up the vodka soaked cloth.

He swallows and bites at his lip. His stare becomes hard again, his eyes like ice once more. Not because she has offended him, she rushes to remind herself, but because he is afraid.

She’s afraid too.

“It’s going to-“ she pauses to swallow too. “I think it’s going to really hurt,” she confesses in a small voice.

His breathing is deep and quick. He nods once, twice – curtly and stoically.

“Tell me and I’ll stop, okay? I’ll stop at once. I promise. I don’t want to hurt you.”

His muscles grow tense, rippling in his arms.

She inclines forwards.

“Regina-“ he starts abruptly, grasping at her wrist, her hand. He takes one last, long in-drawn breath - and then his eyes are resolute and fixed on her. “You’re a good person. Thank you.”

His hand has not left hers.

Her heart is hammering in her chest and her lip trembles again.

“Do it,” he commands. “ _Please.”_

He grasps her hand.

He does not scream.

\---

He uses the showerhead to wash his hair before he goes, to remove the dirt, sweat and flecks of blood from off his hands and face. Aleksander listens with a heavy seriousness when she warns him that he could track dirt from his body back into his wound if he is not diligent, and so he showers at a snail’s pace, painstakingly careful not to undo all her good work.

Whilst he shows, she takes his clothes to put in the wash whilst he bathes, flushing and raising her eyes heavenwards when she comes across his underclothes. Against all logic, he lets her take his gun. She picks it up gingerly, carrying it with both hands, bile in her gorge, before setting it down on the kitchen counter. She leafs through the pockets of his jeans, just to make sure she isn’t washing anything important, but there is nothing in them. The jacket she leaves well alone.

She is listening to the dull murmur of his clothes on a dry cycle when she hears her name.

“Regina?” He calls softly from the bathroom.

She is on her feet immediately. “Are you - are you alright?” She calls through the crack in the door.

“What?” He asks, self-conscious. “Yes. Yes. I’m fine. I’m sorry. Are my clothes dry yet?”

She swallows audibly and heat rises in her cheeks. “No,” she says clumsily. “They still have about twenty minutes left on the cycle. I – I’m sorry. It’s a new machine, but it’s not as good as our old one.”

The explanation is rushed, garbled. It is _absolutely_ unnecessary.

Regina closes her eyes slowly as self-loathing drips through her.

An awkward silence hangs in the air.

“I’m making you uncomfortable,” he realises with a slow flash of understanding, and she is suddenly all too aware of the small number of years that divide them. He changes tack immediately, concerned. “I’m sorry for this. I’ll just wait in here until they’re dry. Don’t worry. I want you to be okay.”

_He could tell just from the tone of my voice_ , she thinks miserably - but at the same time, unbidden, a strange surge of warmth rushes through her at the thought that he would so immediately put her own comfort above his own.

No one else has ever acted like her feelings meant _anything_.

She passes his clothing to him through the door when they have dried completely, averting her eyes again, but she keeps the sweater. She has it bunched in her hands, held nervously in front of her chest.

“I couldn’t salvage the sweater,” she tells him, biting at her lip. “The blood just wouldn’t come out.”

Wearing only jeans, his chest bare and gunshot wound garish on his otherwise unblemished skin, he opens the door fully. She cranes her neck up anxiously to watch his expression.

His face is soft. For the first time, something close to an actual smile graces his lips. “No worries,” he says, and it is warm, his tone of voice. “You can’t work miracles. I didn’t expect you to.”

His hair is damp and it trails water into his eyes. It makes him look younger, more innocent. She has seen him with a gun in his hands today, threatening people in a tone as cold and inflexible as steel, but for a moment, she thinks that she could forget that almost entirely. His feet are bare on the carpet.

“The bandages now?” He asks her, deferring to her expertise. In his mind, she is in charge. She knows what she is doing. He will do as he is told.

His blood-stained sweater is still clasped in her hands. She pauses for a moment, and then nods with determination.

“Yes, we better do them now. Do you want – “ she finds herself flushing again, and hates it “ – Do you want to come through to the kitchen? You’ll be more comfortable.”

He pauses for a moment, echoing her own body language – and then he nods once, decisively.

“Let me through a moment, then – I just need to get the bandages from the bathroom cabinet.”

She moves with a burst of energy borne of frustration at herself, at how she is more a _mess_ than a human being.

He moves to let her through, but not quickly or far enough. When she passes by him in the door way, she stumbles over his feet.

His hands catch her. They are around her waist in an instant, keeping her from falling further, but it hurts him to hold her. His breath cuts between his teeth in a hiss. His face shifts into a grimace of pain, but his hands stay where they are.

He doesn’t let her go.

_Do you see me, Aleksander?_ She wants to ask. _Do you see?_

“Are you alright?” He asks, his eyes full of concern despite the pain he so obviously feels.

She doesn’t answer. “Are _you_?” She counters quietly.

“Yes,” he says simply.

“Then so am I.”

She reaches into the cabinet, draws forth the roll of bandages, and looks at him.

“Let’s go.”

\---

“Is there anywhere here in Winden hiring?” Aleksander asks her, clenching his jaw at the tightness with which she wraps his bandages.

Regina is frowning in concentration, her tongue bitten between her teeth. “There’s the high street,” she says distractedly, putting her hand on his shoulder for purchase as she wraps the bandage around his back. “I don’t know of any jobs going at the moment though.”

“Is there manufacturing? Cars – electrical goods?”

“A little. But not really. Winden is only a small town. We have a hospital?”

“Engineering work in general? Metalworks?” A note of desperation is beginning to enter his voice.

It is the first time she has heard him sound anything but calm. Perhaps that is why she does it, why she tells him. She does it reluctantly, like it is pulling at her teeth.

Her voice is subdued. She does not look at his face.

“I might know one place.”

He jerks and looks up at her, a wild hope in his eyes.

“My mother – “ and then she stops. It is takes a beat for her to regain control of herself. “My mother might be able to give you a job.”

“Your mother?” He seizes on it immediately. “Doing what?”

“I honestly couldn’t say,” she says irritably, going back to wrapping his bandages. If he notices that she is suddenly a little less gentle, a little less tender, he doesn’t say anything. “She’s the Director of the nuclear power plant.”

“That’s…” He trails off, and she can see the cogs whirring in his head. His gaze is suddenly sharp, focused on something internal and complex that she can’t see. “That’s perfect.”

She lays a hand on his bare shoulder and smoulders venomously inside.

“Could I go now? Would security let me in? Would she still be there?” He pauses, mind still whirring. “Do I have a chance, do you think?” He directs the question at her, probing, keen to know what she makes of the idea.

All of a sudden she feels a little bit ashamed.

_You’re a nasty piece of work,_ she thinks dully. _He’s desperate – so desperate that he’d run to an interview with your mother after getting **shot** , for even the **chance** of getting a job. You’re bitter and selfish and it’s sickening that you would hold these things back just to have something for yourself for once._

She swallows and her lip trembles slightly.

_When has anyone ever looked at you with that much hope?_

“Yes,” she says quietly. “I think you’d have as good a chance as any. But there are some things you have to do the moment you get in there.’”

All of a sudden, he is looking at her as if she holds the secrets of the universe. “Like?” He prompts.

“She’s not – My mother – She doesn’t give people the benefit of the doubt. She isn’t – _patient_ , or kind, or prone to sympathy. Most people… Most people are not worth her time. She’ll be judging you from the moment you walk through the door. Not just your appearance. Everything.”

Regina cannot help but wonder how much he can read between the lines, how much he can hear the things she’s left unsaid.

“You need to give her a reason to hire you straight away, so tell her – “ she looks shamefaced “ – tell her that we’re friends. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a lie,” she grits out. “She’ll pay attention then.”

There is silence, for a beat.

There is an odd look in Aleksander’s eyes – something gentle, something surprised. Something – hurt.

“Are we not friends?” He asks quietly, as if suddenly realising that he has misunderstood her.

She gives him a numb look, a thin, gray thing. “You barely know me,” she murmurs.

Regina wants friendship so badly that she has barely has the words – but that has always been her problem; the wanting.

Her hand is still on his bare arm. She lets it drop.

He frowns at her.

He moves deliberately, slowly. He places his hand on her arm, as he had only hours before, when he had told her that everything was alright; she had felt the weight of it on her then, the heat of it, and it had sent an unknown feeling through her. It had moved her then. It moves her now.

He looks her in the eye, and his gaze is so soft.

_Blue_ , she thinks again. _But not cold. Not cold at all. How could I have thought that?_

It is almost tender.

“Maybe I don’t know you,” he tells her quietly, and he pulls himself up straight. There is steel in him, in this older boy she’s found. “But I know I’d like to. If you gave me the chance.”

Heart in her mouth, Regina finishes tying the bandages.

“There,” she says, laying a hand gently over the bullet wound. “We’re done.”

\--

She sends Aleksander out into the cold November dusk wearing an old pullover of her _opa_ ’s. Before he goes, he gives her once last lingering look – and then he is gone, walking briskly out into the violet at twilight.

The house is empty. There are flecks of blood crusting on her childish sweater, a sweater she has owned since she was twelve. She has never felt so childish wearing it as she does now.

The heat of him, which had brushed over her for so many hours, is gone, dissipated, faded into nothing.

She misses him already.

She walks on tired legs to her bed, and she sits there, alone, as the sun shrinks back and the shadows pool and gather on her walls. The day fades and night begins once more.

And finally – it hits.

The absence is far worse for there having been a presence in the first place to miss.

She curls up on her bed, and loops a curling thread of hair around her fingers, staring without seeing.

_“Apologise to her.”_

_“I’m sorry. They didn’t apologise in the end.”_

_“That wasn’t right. You don’t deserve to be treated like that. No one does.”_

_“Regina – you’re a good person.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“Maybe I don’t know you. But I know I’d like to. If you gave me the chance.”_

The way his eyes had looked and more than looked – had _seen_ , had seen and been soft and had been almost tender-

The way that he had placed his hand on her arm, like she was a creature _deserving_ of love-

And worse and better still, the open, earnest expressions on his face – the grace in his eyes, the gentleness in his voice.

He had not been lying.

The tears start, fat and full, pooling in the corners of her eyes and when they fall, they make a small, flat noise on her bed sheets.

She lets herself weep.

But amidst the tears, something high and mighty, powerful and edged with courage rises in her. Her blood thrums with it; it rises, rises - surges in her heart.

For a heart-struck moment, drowned in weeping, Regina is fearless.

_Yes,_ she thinks. _Yes. I am enough. I am enough. Enough to be loved. I am adequate to it. And more - maybe I deserve things. Maybe I **deserve** love – not yet, I can’t manage everything quite yet and all at once because this is so massive and spiralling and beyond what I can do. But I **can** be loved and I will be loved because everything is alright. Aleksander was right. Everything is alright._

_And when I do -_ she pauses, small and shaken by the immensity of it all- _it will be_ _magnificent._

The outpouring of emotion and the current of fear which runs alongside it is enough for her to want the razor blade, and after a few moments, a new red line crosses her wrist.

But still – the world has changed in the last few hours. And so too has Regina. Only hours before those lines had, for the first time, connected.

_Maybe everything is alright,_ she thinks, trying on fearlessness. _Maybe everything will **be** alright_.

She reaches for her brush. She reaches for a new beginning.

She starts to brush her hair.

\---

The next day, November’s sun is drab and see-through. Her mother has found herself busy, again, and so Regina, once more, has to make her own way to school.

“Hey! Stop!” Aleksander calls, waving to her, neither figment nor a dream. He is distant, but on his face, she thinks he is smiling

The world pauses -

And Regina smiles too.

**Author's Note:**

> If I had my way, I wouldn't have to go to work, and I could just write this pairing all day. I cannot stress how fantastic the initial set up for their relationship is.
> 
> Regina; a self-harming, bullied teenager with an abrasive, career-focused genius for a mother and a father who is not in the picture. Regina, afraid to put any effort into her appearance either for fear of the additional violence it might bring her, or otherwise so inured now to feeling worthless that she is afraid to do something that she is petrified of doing something that might make her feel her own worth. Basically: a person so downtrodden and hurt that she can no longer see herself as worthy of the most basic respect and decency.
> 
> And then - Aleksander. And his first words? "Apologise to her." In the most basic terms: you have treated this person wrongly and she DESERVES this most basic sign of respect and I will insist that you give it to her, even if I have to threaten you to achieve it. 
> 
> He's bleeding out from a gunshot wound, and yet he still takes the time to fight for her basic human dignity. He's on the run, and yet he threatens to blow his cover by threatening Ulrich and Katharina for this small instance of inhumanity and decency he sees. It is STUPIDLY noble, and I absolutely cannot get over it.
> 
> And then Regina matches it. She offers Aleksander - on the run, bleeding, frightened and alone - help. She pays his kindness with kindness. She's a teenager and he's been shot. She's not a nurse. This is so far beyond her pay grade that it's unimaginable - but she grits her teeth and she does it. In fact, she does such a good job that he is literally down to the power plant hours later to go see Claudia.
> 
> Aleks was absolutely floored by the magnitude of her grit that day. I am sure of it. She, a terrified 15 year old, saved his life. I am pretty sure that Aleks was devoted to her from that moment on.
> 
> Anyways, I wasn't sure where to end the fic and so it stretched on interminably, much like this author's note. I hope that you enjoyed reading!


End file.
